


A Younger Man

by Esteliel



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Erectile Dysfunction, Established Relationship, M/M, Sounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:14:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2648288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It made Valjean tense, and Javert ached at the thought that this thing which should be nothing but beautiful trust and intimacy between them had become a source  of shame and embarrassment to Valjean.</i>
</p>
<p>Age is catching up with Valjean in a way that interferes with his pleasure. Javert tries to find a new way to return to Valjean what Valjean gives him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Younger Man

Javert pressed his mouth to Valjean's shoulder. His breath escaped in a helpless groan against the salt-slick skin. He tried to bury himself as deeply as possible with another hard thrust as tremors ran through his body and he spent himself at last, after what felt like an hour of vigorous fucking that had left him exhausted and covered in sweat. He set his teeth to Valjean's shoulder, breathed heavily against him as he waited for his heart to slow, then reached around for Valjean's prick.

Valjean was only half hard, and even as he closed his fingers around him, softened further. He tried not to let his disappointment show as he pulled out of him and gently leaned over him to kiss that beloved mouth, but Valjean's eyes slid guiltily away, and one of Valjean's hand moved down to cup his cock, as if to cover himself in shame.

Javert brushed a kiss to his brow and did not speak. Sometimes, Valjean allowed him to try to bring him to release after this. Sometimes it worked. Javert cherished those times, and would have gladly offered to kneel between Valjean's legs and suck him for an hour or two until his jaw ached and his throat was hoarse, but Valjean felt too guilty to allow him to do such a thing too often.

Sometimes, he would slide two fingers into Valjean, and tell him to touch himself, and he would twist and turn and thrust his fingers in again and again until Valjean grew hard – a few times, Valjean had fucked him after that, and even now the memory of that strange stretch and the intimacy of feeling Valjean within him made something inside him throb with yearning.

But those moments had been rare, and Javert did not dare to ask for them, not when it meant such embarrassment for Valjean to have his still strong body slowly succumb to age in such a way.

Even now, Valjean shivered with uncertainty, hiding his face against his sweaty chest for a moment, murmured, “I'm sorry, it does not mean anything. You feel so good. I'm just old.”

“There is nothing old about you,” Javert said with a fierceness that surprised even him. “No, you are beautiful, you are – you are everything I need. If I had the choice to grow old by your side, if the price were to never share your bed again, I would gladly make that deal. You are everything.”

Valjean, his face still strangely shy, pulled his hand away at last from where his prick had softened further to curl in its nest of coarse, white hair. “I like feeling you find your pleasure,” he said at last, speaking haltingly as he made himself meet Javert's eyes. “I am sorry. I want to give this to you, but... You know how it is.” There were lines of unhappiness around Valjean's mouth, and Javert reached out to gently trace them, smooth them away with a caress.

“Your pleasure feels so good. I am ashamed because it is all I want; to feel you when you are inside me, when you put your mouth there – no one has ever touched me as you do, Javert. Were I a younger man, I–”

Javert swallowed, and then cupped Valjean's face in both of his hands. He brushed reverent kisses to his brow, his cheeks, finally to that mouth that yielded to his demands, as always, and parted beneath his lips to allow his tongue to slip inside, to know Valjean as intimately as he had never known another. 

“I want you like this, not as a younger man,” he murmured at last. “I just want you to be happy. To have pleasure, too, if I can give that to you. I don't care how or when. If you say that you enjoyed that, then that is good enough for me. But I also enjoy it to put my mouth on you. To use my hands to stroke you and feel you heavy and warm. If it doesn't... If it does not end in anything, it does not matter to me, as long as you tell me that it is still pleasurable and what you want.”

“I am happy,” Valjean said softly, and took his hand to press a kiss to it. “Like this, I am happy. I am sorry I couldn't... But come now, kiss me. That is pleasurable too, and all I want.”

#

Valjean was hardening slowly, and Javert hummed with a fierce pleasure around him, strangely relieved – not because his jaw was beginning to ache in a way he could no longer ignore, but also, despite all of his reassurances, pleased to see that if he tried, he could still have this effect on Valjean after all. And it was not just pride. It was also the sounds Valjean made, the way those gentle, strong hands would slide into his hair, tremble there against him, not to hold him in place, but simply because Valjean was so overwhelmed that he needed something to hold on to.

Another shaky moan from Valjean; those strong thighs tensed against his shoulders, and he drew a calming hand along the flexing muscles, moaning around Valjean's prick again. He _had_ missed this – the intimacy of the act, the way it felt to have Valjean heavy on his tongue. It was good: his mouth filled with the taste of him; he took him in so deep that his nose brushed those white curls, buried himself in the taste and the scent of sweat and musk and that sweet need brought about by his touch alone.

He did not like to admit it. He would have denied it even to Valjean himself. But in those moments he felt a great relief to know that he was not selfish, grateful to have this proof on his very tongue that he gave Valjean pleasure, that Valjean desired his touch.

Slowly, he drew back, making an obscene, slurping sound as he sucked only the crown of Valjean's cock back into his mouth, looked up at him with devious pleasure for the effect this had on Valjean – the blush, the way those soft lips trembled, red from the way Valjean had bitten them to hold back the sounds he drew out of him regardless.

He tongued at the small slit. Valjean's fingers tightened in his hair nearly to the point of pain. Then they relaxed, and Valjean gasped for breath, eyes wide and dazed, and stroked his hair with trembling fingers as if to apologize. Javert probed the tiny opening again, with the same result, and then tongued and traced it for long, long minutes until Valjean was harder than he had been in months. Valjean's eyes were tightly closed, his head thrown back against the headboard, tears glittering on his lashes as he suffered through Javert's pleasurable torture of him.

Maybe this time, Javert thought breathlessly, maybe this time he could...

In the end, it did not happen; once he let Valjean slip from his mouth, stopped tormenting that sensitive slit, Valjean slowly began to soften again. But it had been sweet to bring him to that point, to reverently kiss the tears from his wet lashes afterward and stroke the white curls on his head and know that it was his mouth that had nearly brought Valjean to the point of ecstasy. 

#

He found himself remembering that pleasure again and again in the weeks after. At last, one day, after he passed a pawnbroker's shop and saw a glint of silver and ivory through the small windows, and gave that window a thoughtful look every day when his work brought him past the display once more, he finally went inside, and returned a short while later with a small, leather-clad box.

Now Valjean lingered near the bed once more, with that same shy, achingly open expression on his face that made Javert ache as well with a feeling he still could not completely put into words. Was this love, he wondered as he looked at him, that man who bore a martyr's weight, this Simon who would have lifted the cross from Christ's shoulders to carry it all the way to Calgary on his lash-marked shoulders? 

He knew little of love, and this emotion Valjean aroused seemed too grand to him for so fanciful a word. That word was something a flighty grisette might murmur into a lover's ear, a student might sing, wine-drunk on a table, who experienced all of love and betrayal and grief and quick forgetfulness in a single night of drunk banter. Could such a thing be the same as this emotion that now sprung ceaselessly from a fount within him, sweet and refreshing and aching in his veins that were too old and dry to grow used to the sudden end of life-long drought without creaking protest? 

To love Valjean was to know devotion, loyalty, trust; to experience redemption and salvation at the touch of a hand; to breathe security and comfort in the warmth of his skin; to know for the first time what it was like to grapple and stretch and exert long-dormant parts of his mind as his fledgling conscience tried to follow Valjean's in discussions by the fire in the evening.

If this was love, it was an overwhelming thing, a force that had taken hold of his life and seen him twist and turn and bend to this new truth, which was that Jean Valjean was a good man, the best man he had ever known; that he, Javert, had been willfully blind for so long; that redemption should be far out of his hands after a lifetime devoted to the ignorance of what was right – and that Valjean still offered redemption and grace with every touch, unwavering in his belief that every man, even Javert, deserved that chance.

Was it any wonder that his heart ached whenever he looked at him? He could not believe that this withered organ within him could hold such an immensity of emotion, but although it hurt to love so much, and so late, now all his being was bent towards returning both happiness and pleasure to Valjean. Valjean deserved it more than any man. Valjean was also strangely shy and reluctant to accept such a thing, which, although it only increased the love Javert felt, could be more than frustrating betimes.

Not so today, he decided. Today he would try to give Valjean pleasure. It was a strange thing to hold this box in his coat, to think of what one could do with it, and his shirt was slightly damp with sweat that came from nervousness as much as arousal. Perhaps it was selfish to desire a physical proof that he could give Valjean pleasure – but also, Valjean deserved all pleasure, and as strange as this thing was, if Valjean would moan again for him like that, if just once he could see him tremble and cry helpless tears when the pleasure became too great...

“Sit down, Valjean,” he said, and although his voice was warm with love, there was already a heat in it that made Valjean flush. “Against the headboard I think – yes, like that. Now spread your legs for me.”

“Javert...” Valjean shifted uncomfortably, although his protest was soft; he had undressed readily enough earlier. Valjean's hands clenched around the wrought iron bars of the headboard, but still his knees parted obediently, revealing himself to Javert's gaze. The heat in Valjean's face rose; he was soft, and his eyes slid away after a moment, as though he were afraid to see disappointment in Javert's face.

Javert smiled, and moved to sit down in front of him; the motion of the mattress made Valjean bite his lip. Javert leaned forward to kiss him generously. Once Valjean had begun to relax, once he had released the headboard with one hand to bury it in Javert's hair instead, Javert wrapped his fingers around his cock, humming a pleased sound into Valjean's mouth as he gently began to coax it to hardness with great patience. It made Valjean tense, and Javert ached at the thought that this thing which should be nothing but beautiful trust and intimacy between them had become a source of shame and embarrassment to Valjean.

When he ceased at last, Valjean was half-hard, but his eyes were hazy with pleasure, and his lips swollen and red. Javert brushed another kiss to them, circled the small slit at the tip of Valjean's cock with his finger, and made a pleased sound to find it damp. Valjean's breathing grew heavier until he was at last panting against his mouth, his eyes squeezed shut as Javert amused himself by teasing that small, sensitive opening with the tip of his finger for long, long minutes, until at last it had begun to leak more of the clear slickness, and he leaned back to take that leather-clad box out of his coat.

“I want you to hold still now,” he said, smiling at the dazed, flushed look on Valjean's face. “Can you do that for me?”

Valjean licked his gleaming lips and nodded, shifting a little. 

“Put your arms out and grasp the bars. Yes, like that. I could tie you,” he said, eying the corded muscle in those still-strong arms, “but I think you can be good for me, and promise to keep those hands there, as if I had tied them. Will you do that for me?”

“Of course.” Valjean's voice was hoarse. Javert thought he would be able to taste the rapid beating of his pulse, if he leaned forward to lick at where his throat was damp with sweat already. Ah, it was good to see the effect he had on Valjean. Even though Valjean's prick was slowly starting to soften again, Valjean was beautifully aroused by his touch, and again Javert thought that it was worth this, even if it would not work out, even if Valjean might turn out not to enjoy it after all. It would have been worth it just to see Valjean surrender himself to pleasure for a while, without shame or embarrassment at his failure to harden as a young man would have.

“Good. Now don't move,” he said, and put the small box down on the bed. “No matter what I do.”

When he opened the box, within there was an array of gleaming rods of silver, and various lengths of soft gum catheters tipped with ivory. A field kit, the pawnbroker had said, such as carried by surgeons on a battlefield, and if Monsieur needed a greater variety of instruments, why, just last week a notable doctor had been forced to leave him with a coffer filled with a plethora of instruments.

Javert had not listened to the man's chatter; he had what he desired. He knew little of medicine, save what he had observed during his time in Toulon, which had indeed encompassed the usage of such things in the infirmary. Tincture of opium made many patients docile; still, in Toulon, the doctor had refused to work on prisoners unless two guards were at hand, after an incident before Javert's arrival had left the doctor's assistant permanently lame.

Javert selected a silver rod of medium size – a straight, thin bar of gleaming metal, and a shiver ran through him at the iron rigidity of it in his fingers. He reached out and took hold of Valjean's prick, heavy and warm and not entirely hard, but what did that matter, he thought dizzily. It would not matter if it did not work, but there was no need for Valjean to feel shame, none at all, as long as he could hear him moan again...

“Don't move,” he said again, and his voice was firm despite the way his own cock pressed with aching urgency against his trousers from the thought of what he was about to do. Valjean nodded, watching him with uncomprehending confusion. Only when Javert very carefully pressed the tip of the rod to that small opening did his eyes widen, and he drew in a shocked breath – but Javert pressed the tip of the implement into the bead of liquid that seeped from Valjean. Then, before Valjean could speak, very slowly, very carefully, he slid the tip into the sensitive hole, and Valjean made a sound he had never heard before, his entire body tensing, and his cock twitched in Javert's hand as it began to harden further.

“Hush. Don't move,” Javert said, his voice rough with enjoyment – and how could he not enjoy this? The sight was obscene: that small, vulnerable hole yielding to the cruelly rigid metal as he allowed the rod to sink in deeper, drawn inside by gravity and the force of its weight, and Valjean's throat produced a whine.

Javert laughed, softly, intimately. “I thought you would like that,” he murmured.

Valjean panted for breath, stared at him from eyes that were dark and confused, overwhelmed by pleasure in a way he had never seen before. “Hold still,” Javert said again, “Shh, just hold still for me,” and allowed the stiff metal to sink in even deeper, the sensitive hole opening for the silver rod as he had to take shuddering breaths at the sensuality of exploring Valjean in a way no one ever had.

“Is this good? Do you like it?” he asked, and then slowly drew the rod halfway out, rewarded by a sob of pleasure as Valjean shuddered and moaned at the sensation.

Slowly, slowly, he allowed the heavy metal to work its way inside Valjean again, watched that tiny, slick hole swallow more and more of the rod while Valjean made beautiful, broken sounds for him, his fingers clenching so hard around the headboard that his knuckles stood out white against his skin. This time, he allowed it to go a little deeper, murmured encouragement when Valjean's muscles strained, his skin gleaming with sweat in the light of the lamps as every muscle of his body tensed. Still Valjean remained obedient and motionless as he watched with wide, near-fearful eyes, allowed Javert to carefully slide in the length of metal as deep as it would go. Valjean's prick was beautifully hard now, and Javert stroked it in admiration; the sound Valjean made was like nothing he had ever heard, a raw, helpless cry, and he tightened his fingers a little.

“Do you like it when I fuck you like this?” He murmured the filthy words lovingly, achingly hard himself at that unthinkable, impossible thought of having filled Valjean like this, touching him in a way no one ever had, exploring him in a way even he himself had never done...

“God, God, Javert,” Valjean moaned, and when Javert drew out the rod again with slow enjoyment, bead after bead of slickness welled up after it, so that soon enough, it was dripping down Valjean's cock when he fucked him slowly with the rod, savoring the way Valjean sobbed with overwhelmed pleasure.

“Javert, oh God, I can't!” he cried at last, his body shuddering uncontrollably when once more, Javert had allowed the heavy silver to sink in as deep as it would go, stretching and filling the small hole with its girth in ways it had never been asked to yield to before. “Oh God, I can't... what it feels like, to feel you touching me inside, oh God, Javert, no one ever, I need to... Oh please...”

Slowly, Javert drew his thumb all the way up, from the root of Valjean's prick to the wet crown, repeated that motion again and again, smoothing his slickness all over him. With enough pressure, both of them could feel the rigid metal within, the alien presence that touched Valjean in places that had never known touch. The sensation made Valjean sob Javert's name, cling to the headboard of the bed, his head thrown back and his cheeks wet with tears as his prick jerked helplessly in Javert's hand. Again and again, Javert smoothed his hand up and down, rubbed his thumb cruelly against the sensitive ridge for long moments while Valjean shuddered, his balls tightly drawn up, and then Javert _twisted_ the rod while rubbing that sensitive spot and Valjean made a sound he had never heard before, the cry of a man driven beyond all thought and reason. When Javert pulled out the rod this time, still keeping up the tormenting motion of his calloused thumb rubbing that ridge again and again and again, Valjean's prick jerked and throbbed; string after string of his spend landed in hot, wet splashes all over his chest while Valjean shuddered and arched against the headboard and at last fell back in utter exhaustion, so completely drained that for a moment, Javert worried whether Valjean had fainted.

He gently pressed the back of his hand to Valjean's cheek. At the touch, Valjean's eyes opened at last. His skin was wet with tears; more wetness gleamed in his lashes, and yet he had never seen Valjean look at him like this: utterly exhausted, utterly drained, his eyes full of a hesitant, stunned disbelief, and he leaned forward to brush his lips against those tear tracks before that expression could turn to shame again.

“You are beautiful,” he said, his voice rough. “God, you are... thank you.”

Valjean's hands at last released the bed-frame; Valjean leaned against him with another sound that could have been a sob, and those arms wound around him, and he held Valjean who still trembled, pressed his lips to salty skin and offered nothing but the unquestioning comfort of his embrace.

“No. Thank you,” Valjean said when he at last drew back, and now there was a first hint of embarrassment in his eyes again, and he raised a hand to wipe at the wetness on his cheeks. “Ah, Javert, that was... I have no words.”

“I love you regardless,” Javert said very softly. “I want to give you pleasure if I can. I thought it would be worth a try. But it is not... You are never too old for me.”

Valjean swallowed. “I wish I were a younger man regardless. I feel like a disappointment,” he murmured, his eyes sliding away again. “I am sorry; you are never selfish, and you deserve all you desire.”

Javert curled his finger around his nape, felt the cooling sweat there, then slid his fingers up into the white hair that curled damply. “And you are never selfish either. I do not need more than you by my side. If that means you never... Well. There are other pleasures. To sleep by your side alone is a wonder.” 

Valjean exhaled against him; he lost himself in another slow kiss. How strange indeed to have this now; what a blessing he had been given!

“I would like that again,” Valjean said very softly, very shyly, after their lips finally parted. “Not too often, Javert. I am old; yes, it is true. I thought I had fainted at last, that it was too great a pleasure for any living man! But if it pleases you, I would like it again.”

Javert smiled, and trailed his hand downward to stroke across those broad, strong shoulders, admiring their strength, and the way Valjean had been so perfectly still at his demand. “It pleases me to hear you make those sounds,” he said at last, and then, when Valjean already was flushing, could not help but add, “Perhaps a larger size, the next time,” and closed the little box with one hand before Valjean could take a closer look. He hid his smile against Valjean's sweat-slick skin as a final tremor ran through the strong body at his words. 

It had been a good investment. And perhaps he should see the pawnbroker about that other coffer after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Resources used for inspiration for this was http://www.medicalantiques.com/civilwar/Articles/Catheters.htm for more or less period appropriate equipment. Apparently French gum catheters are quality... :D


End file.
